I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and I’ve worked in the Manufacturing Engineering, Test Systems Engineering, and Product Safety fields…but something keeps drawing me back to good ol’ Marketing and Design.

Perhaps it’s that Marketing and Industrial Design are the pull in contrast to the push from Sales and the viewpoint of perception in contrast to the logical view of engineering:

In Sales you have to push to make the sale. People may not be interested, but you have to push, push, and push until you can close the sale. When dealing with sales people, folks tend to feel pressured, weaker folks can feel that they’ve been taken advantage of, and people may walk away from a purchase feeling cheated and upset because they may have bought something just to get the sales person off of their back.

With great, effective Marketing and Industrial Design you almost don’t need the pushy sales person. For lack of better words (and mostly because I just plain want to say it) these two fields are the sex appeal behind a product.They are what make you happily save all year so you can buy that one thing that you’ve been longing for, they are what make your imagination soar with the possibilities of how you can use this product to make your life better, and they are what make the non-national park parts of our world so attractive.

I also love the psychology side of Marketing and Industrial Design: when the engineers say that something is one way, but the customer perceives it to be a different way, the engineers lose regardless of the facts – perception wins 100% of the time.

So, how deep does my addiction for these two subjects go? I read Marketing books for pleasure, I am subscribed to many Industrial Design blogs, and I write this blog (it really helps me keep my eyes and ears open for examples of good and bad Marketing and Design).

I hope you enjoy what you read as much as I’ve enjoyed typing it up for you!

-Jim

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

2 Comments:

Hey Jim – didn’t find an email for you, so please excuse my hijacking of your blog! I wanted to send you a free WordPress plugin you might get a kick out of. Hit me up if interested. dave@mydisruption.com.